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Historical Sketch.

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Ipswich, ▬1633-1682.

AUGUSTINE CALDWELL.

 Daniel and Patience [Dudley] Denison came hither hand in hand in 1634, and took up their life-long abode. “The eyelids of the morning were just lighting up our hills,” and the sound of the hammer was still heard upon our primitive houses. A twelve-month had hardly passed since the pinnace of the younger Winthrop floated over the bar and up the river, and cast anchor, as tradition has it, at the spot now known as Edward Choate’s shipyard; and claiming there the virgin soil, they built the first place of shelter.

A rumor drifted into Boston in the spring of 1633, that the Jesuits were to establish an Indian mission here; and the staunch elder Winthrop, then Governor, with action as quick as thought, sent his own iron faith and will, incarnated in his best beloved son, and these old hills echoed the first sounds of civilized labor, and the corner stone of a golden town was laid. Planters and their servants flocked hither; men of strong names and gentle birth; people of letters and liberal thought; and when, a few months later, the General Court baptized the plantation, a name was given which thousands have since loved as they do the name of mother.

Denison was twenty-two years old when he came,—a ruddy youth, like David. He took his position at once a man among these men; he was honored, desired, and for forty-eight years in town and colonial interests, he held their regards without loss or wavering. It was said of him while he was yet living, that he was the most popular magis­trate of the colony, and seven generations have kept his memory fresh.

When Mr. John Norton died in 1663, (a minister of the church on the hill, “studied in arts and tongues,” whose naturally sour temper was somewhat “sweetened by grace,”) Cotton Mather wrote for his gravestone: “If you need to ask who he was you ought not to know.”

This apothegm was apt for, that generation, but we of two centuries later, often need “to roll back the tide of time” and inquire,— “ Who were the early people? what did they do and say?” And one part of this Commemorative programme is to glance at the social and public life of Denison and his peers, and at the times when he was Commander of the little handful of men who made up the protective forces of two hundred years ago. To do this let us in imagination enter primitive Ipswich, and call upon the young Captain, Clerk of the Town and Deputy to General Court,—for Denison was each of these at twenty-four,—and walk with him awhile among his fellows. We cannot easily enter the town by land, for there is only an Indian path between Boston and Ipswich, leading into town over what is now the Topsfield road. John Dane, who built a house on Turkey Shore, near Major Woodbury’s (now the Foss house,) came over this path in 1635. It was such an indifferent way that he was “sometimes in it and sometimes out of it” Governor Winthrop walked down in 1633, and “exercised here by way of prophecy,” as they called preaching then. He walked down again in 1637, and all Ipswich turned out to meet him. The constables preceeded him with halberds, perhaps, for that was the custom. When public men or Court officials came to Ipswich, they were ushered into town by Sheriffs carrying halberds; and we find on our records that a man was once paid for mending the town halberds. Judge Sewall came to Ipswich Court earlier than Sheriff Harris expected him, and the Judge was not conducted in state to Sparks’ Tavern. So unusual was it that he made a note of the fact in his Diary. William Adams a boy of fifteen, went from Ipswich to Cambridge College in 1666, in this same Indian path, and lost the track and staid in the woods all night.

The earliest method of travel seems to have been by boat. Dep. Gov. Symonds wrote to a friend in Boston, “let me know when you are to come that I may send horses to the boat.” We can come, if we choose, with old Matthias Button or Henry Kinsman, who in 1634, the year Denison first pressed Ipswich soil, began to run occasional boats between Ipswich and Boston. They are the first Messengers of which we have record. Mary (Winthrop) Dudly, sister-in-law of the Denisons, who lived on Spring street, then called Brooke street, received by them some pinnes and sope, some flowered holland for a wast coat and tape to bind it, &c. With these Messengers let us float up the river.

On both banks are pleasant single houses of two stories, with hall, parlor and kitchen on the first floor; room over the hall, and room over the parlor; Luthern windows, wooden chimneys as wide as the house and plastered within with clay, and “doors high enough to enter without stooping.”[1] If we stop a moment at the Choate ship­yard, we shall find that Thomas Hardy, once a servant of Gov. Winthrop, has supplanted the first rude shelter by a strong frame house and dug a well; the same old well which gives living waters to-day. We will not stop to drink now, but will sail up the stream. There is no dam at Damon’s saw and grist mills to hinder the progress of our boat, though Mr. Richard Saltonstall thought one could be made to advantage; and a hundred years later the Mannings built one, and the ledges at that point were called “the lime-kiln rocks.” As we sail by the garden of the late Capt. Samuel N. Baker we find that first Firmin and then Appleton built ware houses there; still higher, at Choate Bridge, we find first a lighter or gondola, and then logs and planks to carry men and horses over, and land them just before the door of Mr. Manasseh Brown’s residence, which in that day was Reginald Foster’s. Still higher up the stream we must go, to the stone and brick mills,—and now we may land, for here is the first Ipswich home of Daniel and Patience Denison. It is a humble house. Some of you remember it. More than forty years ago an old Mr. Lancaster and his daughter Mehitable lived there. Humble, and yet those early gentle-folk had tasteful and attractive homes. We read in inventories of Turkish rugs, tapestried walls, leather-covered chairs. Dep. Gov. Symonds at Argilla, had red and green curtains, cushions of Turkey-worke, a suite of damask, a carved chest, &c. Madam Rebekah Symonds had Dodd on the Commandments hound in green plush, her favorite book.

This house of Denison by the mill, remained in his possession two years, then he sold it to Humphrey Griffin, and Griffin sold it to the Burnhams, and the Burnhams to Anthony Potter, whose widow gave a silver Communion cup to the First Church; and Anthony sold it to the Saffords, whose descendants retained it till almost our own day. You can remember the Saffords, the men were blacksmiths, with a shop near the bayscales on the Topsfield road.

Major Denison’s second house was near or upon Meeting House Hill. Matthew Whipple had a house “neere ye meeting house,’ which had Major Denison’s house S. W., Theophilus Wilson, N. W. a Lane S. E. the streete N. E. His houselot touched the Pound. This house[2] was burned in 1665, and Sarah Roper, a servant of the family was “comitted to prison on suspition of hir wickedly & felloniously burning it.” She was acquitted, but found guilty of stealing from the Denisons, and was “whipt wth tenn stripes vpon her naked body.” Denison built a new house on the same site.

The Homes of Ipswich to which Denison was always welcome would certainly win us to-day, if they existed.  They were the homes of the “Ynhabitants who engaged to pay yearly in way of gratuitye an amount of money to encourage him in his military helpfullnes unto them.” Let us go forth from his house, and walk with him about the streets, as David did his Zion.

Just before the front door of his house by the mill, is a river-ford kept open by the town through all generations since. We can cross to this side the stream, entering the road nearly in front of this Hall. We must first pay our duty, as old-time people called it, to the Ministers. They live not far from the old ford. The Town Records and well-authenticated tradition, mark the very places. The order of the houses on the street, as given upon the Selectmen’s book is,—Mr. Rogers, Mr. Tuttle, Mr. Ward and Mr. Winthrop; a stately street for a new town. We will go first to Mr. Rogers’, whose son married Denison’s only daughter. Where Mrs. Trask now lives, stood the house which sheltered the first Nathaniel Rogers; and the adjoining house which was built a century ago by Mr. Thomas Baker, was partly made of the Rogers timbers. When the late David Baker built the house in which Mrs Trask resides, a silver cup was dug up, with the initials N. R. Ipswich will never cease to regard her Rogers and his descendants,—a man of such self distrust, that Mr. Ward said of him, “though he had grace enough in his heart for two men, he had not half enough for himself.” And of his father, the Rev. John Rogers of Dedham, England,—a Boanerges truly,—the more one reads of him the better they love him; his old portrait, painted in 1623, hung on Ipswich walls a hundred years, and a copy of it was, in 1881, placed in our Public Library.

From the Rogers home to Rev. Nathaniel Ward’s is but a stride. It was just at the east of the Col. Nathaniel Wade[3] mansion. When Mr. Theodore F. Cogswell opened the new street at that place, which he wisely christened Ward street, the old cellar lines and chimney bricks were unearthed. There Ward wrote “The Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” printed in 1647; there, also, he prepared the “ Body of Laws,” which Stephen H. Phillips, Esq., of Salem, said would be called a great work by wise men of any age. Over his mantel he inscribed, Sobrie, Juste, Pie, Loete; threads woven into his life, probably. Twelve years he lived there, “dignified as Sidney or Milton,” then went back to England.

A few rods to the east is the Winthrop house, begun in the spring of 1633, and not finished in October, and the elder Winthrop feared it would not be suitable for his son’s winter comfort. To this house came Martha (Fones) Winthrop, in the freshness of her bridal days, and died in less than a year. They carried her, doubtless, to the yard on the Hill, and grieved over her early death. Here came, also, Elisabeth Reade, Winthrop’s second bride, and her sister with her,— Mistress Margaret Lake. [Another sister became the second wife of Dep. Gov. Symonds.]

Close at hand were the Tuttles, an interesting family and rich; some of them went home to old England for a visit.

Robert Andrews, who kept the first Tavern in town, owned a house lot where Mr. Zenas Cushing’s mansion stands. His old Tavern, in which he resided, tradition says was on the site of the first Methodist Meeting House. It was a one story house, and stood until the early part of the present century. An old desk is still in town, which he brought from England. His son Thomas was Schoolmaster, and fitted boys for Cambridge. Thomas lived in Ezekiel Cheever’s house, which people of sixty years ago could well remember. One of his scholars was William Adams, to whom reference has already been made, who became the young minister of Dedham, and died early.

Directly opposite the mansion of Mr. John Heard, lived Samuel Hall, a young man of wealth and very open hands: liberal he was, certainly some called him convivial, and reproved him sharply because he invited young fellows to his parlor to drink his wines. The General Court “ffined him Vs for drunkenes by him comitted a shipboard,” but he did not pay it. In his old age, and after he went back to England, he gave a legacy to Ipswich Soldiers who suffered in the Indian wars. He lived in town when our boys marched away to the Pequot war, 1637, and he heard in England of the fearful scenes of 1676, and provided by his will for the needs of the sufferers. Mad. Rebekah Symonds dipensed his bounty.

        Another philanthropic name, never to be forgotten by Ipswich sons, was Mr. Richard Saltonstall, a close neighbor of Denison. He was the William Lloyd Garrison of his day. He entered the first manly protest against slavery. (1645.) A truer man never trod Ipswich soil. Would he could have died among us, that we might be richer for his dust. His is the first name on that noble list who petitioned Gen. Denison to stay in town. The late Luther Waite, a young man of true antiquarian taste, published this list just before his lamented death. Mr. Saltonstall was one of the very few who knew where the Regicides were. In 1672 he gave them £50. The tradition from his day to ours is, that his sympathy and care brought them to Ipswich, and they were secreted for awhile in the ancient Appleton house, now the residence of Mrs. Whilhelmina Wildes. It is a very interesting fact that the halls the Saltonstalls left when they came to New England, were purchased by the Earl of Strafford, who was beheaded in the reign of Charles I. The estate still remains in pos­session of the Earl’s descendants. The old Ipswich home of the family still remains; one of the quaintest of our relics. We like to look at it for the sake of its builder.

Close by the earliest Denison house lived Nicholas Easton, a man of active brain, and much better understood to-day than in his own time. He was associated with Denison in the care of the gunpowder. He had “woful errors” they thought, to which we may allude again. He moved away, and Ipswich saints rejoiced and were glad. He went to Newport and built the first house in that now famed city, and was Governor of Rhode Island.

Later still, through the influence of Mr. Saltonstall, came the Farleys, staunch, practical, unblemished.

Moving along, hurriedly, we next call upon old Thomas Scott; not old then, however, but in his prime, at Denison’s word marching away to the Pequot war. He was a—free thinker, shall we call it? independant thinker would be better, perhaps, not an unusual thing in that golden day of Ipswich life. He was openly rebuked and fined for not saying Mr. Norton’s Catechism. (It seems that grown-up people were catechized then.) There was a great oak before his door which was smitten by lightning the same Sunday that Quarter-master Perkins’ Bible lost the book of Revelation by the same power and his waistcoat riddled as if by shot, and he himself unharmed. Scott lived near Damon’s corner, and from his day until after the Revolution, Washington street went by his name.

Within a stone’s throw of Scott was the name of Appleton. Samuel the elder by his presence and power giving grace and influence to the community; while Samuel the second, (a marvel of bravery, who stood for hours face to face with death in the Hadley fight,) has a name on the same historic page with honored Denison, Endicott, Mason, Underhill, and others who faced the foe and held the field. Ipswich will yet find satisfaction in writing his name in imperishable letters on her tablets. A braver officer never grasped a sword.

        There is another grand man of that generation, [whose daughter married Denison’s only son,] whom to know is to revere: Dep. Gov. Symonds. His escutcheon was a clover leaf, simple and beautiful as his life. He lived at Argilla, though he had a town house where the Seminary stands. He was eminently social and had many visitors. Judge Sewall one June day walked from the Appletons to Argilla and ate wild strawberries which grew abundantly on the Symonds farm then as they did when some of us were boys. There is one pretty glimpse of his social life in the Winthrop Papers, a gathering on a November day, 1658, when he was at home from Court: “My cozens all three were in health and as merry as very good cheere and Ipswich frends could make them.” The “frends” enumerated were Madam Symonds, Mistress Lake, Sam: Symonds his son, Mistress Nath’l Rogers and three of her sons, Mr. Hubbard and his family, Mr Daniel Epps, (whose wife was Elizabeth Symonds,) and his family. A genial dinner party, surely. One pleasing feature of Gov. Symonds was, he allowed Mad. Rebekah Symonds to spend her income as pleased her. Engrossed always in public affairs, with fatherly inter­est looking after apprentices, servants, tenants, (and he had many,) he died with his harness on at Boston, and was laid in the Winthrop tomb.

We have recently read forty to fifty unprinted letters[4] written by Mr. John Hall of Assington, England, to his mother, Madam Rebekah Symonds of Ipswich. From them we catch glimpses of this lady’s shopping lists, when she was about sixty years of age. Her shoes ordered from London were damson and purple Turkey leather and satin, scarlet stockings, a light violet couler petticoat, “grave and suitable for a person of quality.” She wished for a lawn whiffe, but her son answered, “all gentle women wear now instead, shapes and ruffles; and such as goe not with naked necks ware black silk wiffles ;” and so he forwarded the shape, ruffles and wiffle. She had a spotted gauze gown, a stripped silk, a cinnamon silk, a flowered silk, “with panes as they rate them to weare in the sleeves as the fashion is for some.” Silver gimp and ribbons for trimming. A black sarinden cloak, and two black plush muffs, “modish and long.” An alamode scarf, plaine lutestring scarf, a tabby flowered satin manto with a silver clasp and without a lining; a pair of embroidered satin shoes to match the manto. We suppose as Mad. Symonds was the wife of the Dep. Governor, she was familiar with the Colony law: “ Noe pson, either man or woman, shall make or buy any slashed cloathes, other then one slashe in each sleeve, and another in the backe; also all cutt works, imbroidered or needle worke capps; bands and rayles are forbidden here after to be made & worne; also all gold and silver girdles, hatt bands, belts, ruffs, beav’r hats are prohibited to be bought and worne.” But our Fathers very wisely left this loophole of escape, “it is the meaneing of the Court that men and women shall haue liberty to weare out such app’ell as they are now provided of, except the immoderate greate sleeves, slashed app’ell, greate rayles and long wings.” As clothing did not wear out in those days, we presume the enactments of Court did not much modify the fashion.

Mad Symonds wished to fan herself with a feather fan, and ordered one from London; but her son wrote, “ None but very grave persons vse a feather fan, and now tis growne almost as obsolete as Russets, and more rare to be seen then a Yellow Hood; but the thing being civil and not dear I send one.” He sent also two tortoise shell fans, and the feathers had a silver handle. She wore hoods to match her gowns, and bought two at a time: two lustre hoods, two whiffle hoods, two manto silk hoods, two spotted gauze hoods, and one brown lutestring. She had a locket containing the picture of her grandaughter, little Betty Hall, and two necklaces, one of amber and another of Scotch pearl. If a relative in England died, a mourning ring was sent to her; if any married, wedding gloves came. House­keepers may be interested to know that she sent from Argilla farm to London town for a quarter of a pound of nutmegs and two ounces each of cloves, mace and pepper. She ordered several times three thousand pins and one hundred needles. She had three children and never saw them together for eighteen years, and she outlived them all. These letter-gleanings are mere trifles, but trifles two hundred years old become gold dust.

We cannot walk half over town, for there yet remain Gov. Simon and Mrs. Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet,—sister of Patience Denison; for eight years Ipswich was their home, and here the young poetess wrote several of her rhymes, and here some of her children were born; and there is Governor Thomas Dudley, father of Mistress Denison, he lived next door to the Bradstreets on High street, a few rods east of the Burying Yard; he was the first person on record who employed Indians as servants; Robert Lord and William Bartholomew, our early Clerks and noble men; the Paines who founded the Grammar School; the Cogswells who lived in tapestried rooms; the Wades and Bakers who married Governors daughters; John Dane who left a quaint story of his English boyhood; Daniel Warner who wrote poetry; and our own Hubbard, with jewelled lips, the pride of our town’s young life. These were the type of men who grasped the folds of Denison’s doublet, when the richness of the banks of the Merrimac lured him, and prevailed upon him to stay.

But with all that must remain unsaid, there is one more we ought to talk about,—the Town doctor,—Gyles Firmin. I know not where his house was, but his son Thomas built the house now owned by the heirs of the late Capt. Samuel N. Baker. Doct’r Gyles Firmin mar­ried Susan Ward, the minister’s daughter. His letters are full of interesting things. In one of them he complained that Ipswich was so healthy that “the gaines of physick would not find him with bread;” and therefore he was “strongly sett upon to studye divinitee, for physick is but a meene helpe.” We do not wonder that physic proved a meene helpe, if all prescriptions were like the one given at that date for tooth-ache, viz., Gunpowder arid brimstone compounded with butter, which “proved very available,” they said. If, with gunpowder in the mouth, the breath caught fire, as did Betty Tetlock’s, we can certainly see its “availability ;” an easy method of extraction, maybe.

The Doctor found not only a healthy place but a moral one, for in “seven years he never saw a man drunk or heard an oath:” but he adds naively, as if he doubted what he wrote, “if such sinnes be among us privily, the Lord heale us.” His father-in-law, Ward, greatly mourned that Ipswich had so many people, because too much of “Satan’s kingdom crept into our borders;” and he wished to do just what California did the other day to the Chinese,—shut people out. Satan’s kingdom was not easily shut out; indeed, it came in the first Winthrop vessel, for Robert Cole and William Perkins, (not the ancestor of our Perkinses, however,) had to stand “one hour in publique vewe, with a white sheete of pap on the brest, haveing a greate D made vpon it,” for drinking strong water too freely.

         The Baker boys had a young friend, —John Perley,— who took a free ride on a neighbor’s horse, and was shut up in Boston jail. The Bakers went to Boston, broke the jail door, and set him free. It made much scandal. Thomas Bragg and Edward Cogswell fought in the meeting house in sermon time. A young man, whose name I have lost, smoked tobacco in the street on a Sabbath-day, which was quite as bad as the sin of young Nathaniel Mather of Boston, who whittled a stick behind the door one Sunday between sermons; the remem­brance of which lay hard upon his conscience for years, and he talked about it on his death bed. John Lee, one of the smartest and headiest of our Ipswich men, [his seal was a martlet,] was whipt and fined for calling Mr. Justice Ludlow of Boston, “false-hearted knave, hard-hearted knave, and heavy ffriend,” a truth, probably, which should have remained unspoken.

         One queer evidence of the [total?] depravity of our early Ipswich appears in the case of Henry Bachelor, who did not go to meeting. It was not because he had no seat, for the Selectmen added benches and stools as fast as people moved into town to occupy them. It was found that Henry and his wife lived too far from the meeting house; therefore the Selectmen were empowered by Court to sell his farm and move him to town where he could easily go and hear Mr. Cobbitt dispense the gospel. We sincerely hope he enjoyed Mr. Cobbitt’s sermons better than Henry Walton did of Lynn, who said he had as “leave hëare a dogg Barke, as to heare Mr. Cobbitt preach.” For which rudeness he was fined by the Court. Court Records are a strange mixture. We can well understand why Nicho­las Easton declared that “all the elect had an indwelling devil and an indwelling Holy Ghost.” This assertion was voted a “woful error,” but when we read that, in 1639, the ministers of the Colony discovered eiqhty errors of faith, we do not wonder that somebody thought there was a leaven besides the Holy Ghost affecting the lump. This discovery banished Roger Williams, who was “like to set on fire all America by the Rapid motion of a windmill in his head;” and Anne Hutchinson, “of voluble wit and nimble tongue;” and caused Cotton Mather to rank all grades of heretics as people of “fly-blown under­standings.” Two hundred years later we look differently at these heresies and heretics. Resurrection comes to every body sooner or later. Those who were buried heretics eventually come out of the grave saints, and “rub the dust from out their eyes.”

There is another page of Denison’s day to be looked at. It shows why one hundred and forty-five strong right Ipswich hands covenanted to pay him an annuity as long as he lived in town. Not only the men of quality, but the muscular arms that could grasp ax or musket; trusting life and property to his prudence and sagacity: men who covenanted when they left English soil never to “linger after their English diet or harbor disease in their minds by discontent;” men who came to stay, whatever occurred.

We can never truly understand the terror which pervaded hearts, at times, during the first half century of New England life. Cotton Mather said it was often agony of spirit. The great and almost interminable foes were the Indians, who only wanted opportunity to tomahawk every white man on the soil. Now and then one touched civilization. Old Masconomet, the Ipswich Sagamore, (for whom a fire engine was named in my boyhood,) whose grave is on Sagamore Hill at Hamilton, took an oath that he would keep the Ten Com­mandments, and the Ipswich Church hoped this heathen was redeemed. But when they saw that he broke them at every oppor­tunity, they sadly concluded that he only followed Christ for the loaves he did not know how to bake and the fishes he was too lazy to catch.

When Ipswich was settled there were the Terratines in Maine, more cruel than Turks; the Pequots and Narragansets in Connecticut and Rhode Island; besides clans along the shores, Agawams, Naumkeags, and others. With them there was repeated struggle. Our own Hubbard gathered much of his History of it, from living lips. When the Winthrop men were breaking the turf to lay the foundation of their first places of shelter, the Indians told them that only a few weeks before the Terrateens invaded Agawam and carried away the Sagamore’s wife. And during the first Spring, (1633,) while the men were planting, forty canoes filled with Terratines came up to the Neck, and but for the calmness and resolution of John Perkins, the Winthrop men would have been exterminated. When, in 1637, 24 of our boys marched away to the sound of the kettle-drum to Connec­ticut, all Ipswich was ajar with fears; and from 1637 to 1675 an attack would not have been a surprise any day.

We who sit without fear tonight in this pleasant Hall, cannot realize that for forty years there was a house on Meeting House Green, surrounded by a stone fort, designed for a retreat for the women and children. These garrison houses were built in all the towns; one of them may yet be seen in Salem, on Washington street, opposite the granite Court House. Two barrels of powder were sent to Ipswich from Boston ; a part of it was “sould out to those that found muskets,” and the remainder stored for use on the great beam of the Meeting House. Every night watchmen walked about the town, ready at any moment to fire the alarm musket. All males from ten years old and upward were drilled by Gen. Denison and others ten times a year. The little boys carried half-pikes; at 16 they joined the adult companies. Every Sunday the men and boys brought their muskets to the Meeting House and stacked them before the door, while wards paced to and fro during the long service. The prayers of the minister were made fervent by the state of affairs. Mr. Cobbitt tells of praying when Thomas Kimball, a native of Ipswich, was slain at Haverhill, and his wife and babes carried into captivity. Guns before the door, powder casks on the great beam, and the heads of the wolves that had been killed during the week nailed to the lintels,—it must have been ghastly worship! But children of the first generation grew from cradle to middle life familiar with these scenes.

Doors of dwellings were filled with the sharp points of nails and spikes. Mr. Thomas Browne, one of our octogenarians, tells me when his father bought the Sargent farm, the old front door of the farm-house, (once the home of Dep. Guv. Symonds,) was literally filled with spikes. This door had been stored in the garret as a relic. There was a bullet hole in it, made one night when a party of Indians landed at Castle Hill and went plundering through Argilla. The tradition is, that one of them ran and jumped against the door to force it open; bruised by the spikes and annoyed by the gun, they went howling away. Mr. Daniel Hodgkins has preserved the old Cobbitt door, which seems to have been made similar to the Symonds. General Court ordered “that at Gov. Symonds’ two men should be appointed by the major-gen’ll [Denison ] or, in his absence by the chiefe comander in the towne of Ipswich, to be a guard to the Deputy Goun’ors house, that is so remoate from neighbours, and he so much necessitated to be on the countrys service.” (1675 ) Mad. Symonds’ son writes from Assington, “Your sorrows in New England Are much vpon mee, And I have direful Ideas in minde of the frights and distractions that these salvages put you too. And my vncle Swaine as wel as myselfe Judge you might find some pease in England whilst troubles are there : for you cannot fight those Heathens In your person otherwise than with prayers and tears, which may be done here.”

In the first great horror of 1637, messengers went from town to town with the tidings that the Pequots were devastating Connecticut; that John Oldham, a Boston merchant had been killed, and Capt. John Gallup had “fed the bodies of his Indian murderers to the fishes.” This was no idle tale to Ipswich ears, for the name of Gallup was well known in town, as he was allied by marriage to Mistress Lake, sister of the Winthrops and Symondses, and mother of Sheriff Harris’ wife: and when the announcement came that the Colonies were to unite their forces for the overthrow of the tribe, our noble boys rose with the rest and hastened to the field. How well they did history tells. There is a leaf on our old shattered Record Book, written with the quill of William Bartholomew, which gives the names of fourteen of the twenty-four who marched away on that April morning and united with the Salem boys under Capt. Trask. That yellow leaf is as sacred as the granite shaft on Meeting House Hill, and I am not sure but it is quite as enduring. It gives the names of:—Wiliam Fuller, Francis Wainwright, John Wedgewood, Thomas Sherman, William Whitred, Andrew Story, John Burnham, Robert Cross, Palmer Tingley, William Snyder, Robert Philbrick, John Philbrick, John Castell, Edward Lummas, Edward Thomas. Nearly every one became a substantial man in town.

I wonder if John Norton prayed and Nathaniel Rogers lifted his hands in benediction before they left! I wonder if the Ipswich women were as brave and strong as Elisabeth (Choate) Farley in 1776, when she buckled the knapsack of her boy Robert,—only sixteen years old, —and told him to go and behave like a man! Nature is the same in all generations: the women of 1637 and 1676 simply transmitted their true life to their children of 1776 and 1861.

Three of our Ipswich boys,—Wainwright, Wedgewood, Sherman, won imperishable records in this exploit. Francis Wainwright, who came to Ipswich as a servant of Alexander Knight, became,—no more a servant,—but the head of a house that for a hundred years was the most influential of any in town in mercantile affairs. The old people of forty years ago told of the obesience the plain people rendered to Col. John Wainwright, (son of Francis,) as they passed him on the street. Francis Wainwright’s story is thus given by Vincent: “A pretty sturdy youth of Ipswich,going forth somewhat rashly to pursue the salvages, shot off his gun after them till all his powder was shot and spent; which they perceiving re-assaulted him, thinking with their hatchets to have knocked him in the head; but he so bestirred himself with the stock of his piece, and after with the barrel when that was broken, that he brought two of their heads to the army. His own desert and the encouragment of others will not suffer him to be nameless—he is called Francis Wainwright.”

Robert Pike’s Diary, says that John Wedgewood and Thomas Sherman gave chase to a scout of Indians and drove them to a swamp; both were wounded and came home with scars and the satisfaction of having driven back the enemy. Ipswich was not ashamed of her sons.

One September Sunday, in 1642, the alarm guns were fired, and men ran with their muskets to the Meeting house, to learn that the Merrimac tribes had risen in conspiracy. Denison marched away with forty of our men. It was like the Baltimore Sunday of twenty years ago, the very memory of which comes over us now and then like a strange dream. In 1643 anotber alarm was made, and twenty men were drafted. In 1653, there came a rumor which produced unusual excitement. It was in the Spring, the busy season of the year. Men were so filled with fear they could not work; mothers did not dare let their children go beyond their grasp; every unusual sound caused people to hold their breath. Gen. Denison again called out his men, and they marched away to quell the Pascatags.

So the years dragged till 1676,—when Denison had reached his sixty-fourth year. Then came that great ugly throb of the Indian heart. Only God saved New England then! Denison gathered up his men and marched to Maine. Appleton was made Commander of the forces of Central Massachusetts. Brave Appleton! how he fought. He forced his way from town to town; one day Freegrace Norton, [his family lived where Miss Abigail Appleton now resides,] fell fatally shot at his side: a bullet went through his own hat; three Ipswich names, and I know not how many more,—John Ayres, John Pritchet, Richard Coy,—were left dead on the field. Appleton reached Hadley, and without flinching held the town for hours. Then followed the fights of Lancaster, Medfield, Marlboro,—everv scholar of our schools has heard of them; and at Marlboro our cousin Rowley lost her Brocklebank, one of the truest of her sons.

The Massachusetts troubles so filled the hands of the Court that the fury of the Terratines of Maine was more than they could cover with their wing; and they gave Denison the best testimonial of their confidence in him he could have received,— they committed the whole eastern affair to his sagacity and care. It was an important post; a stretch of towns exposed to Indian attacks,—Casco and Falmouth already sacked and ruined; Arrowsick with a thousand cattle at the mercy of the savages; Wells, (named for an Ipswich boy born near the corner of Elm street,) York, Kittery, and so on. The bravery of the Maine people was almost fabulous. Hubbard makes the pulse quicken by the narrations. One fact we will tell: Fifteen women gath­ered in one house and the savages came; a young girl stood guard at the door, keeping the Indians at bay, till every woman but herself had escaped, and then she was felled with a hatchet and left for dead. These scenes multiplied every day. General Denison determined to strike the lion in his den; to go into the very forests for their des­truction. But God rose to the rescue, and sent such a bitter cold the Indians were obliged to yield to escape freezing and starving.

It was at this time that Thomas Cobbitt, son of the Minister on the hill, was made a captive. At Mr. Cobbitt’s house on East street, the church gathered and prayed for his liberation and return. One godly woman sat in great inward recollection during that hour of prayer, receiving the divine conviction that Thomas would come home alive, and told his mother so. Notes were read in the Congregations of Ministers Phillips, Hale, Higginson, Whiting, Buckley, and the three churches of Boston. At this time, Gen. Denison in Maine, met Mugg, the Chief, and by wise negotiations obtained the release of Cobbitt and ended the war. Denison sent Mugg to Boston in care of his brother, Gen. George Denison. On his way he stopped in Ipswich and was at the house of Mr. Cobbitt. Curious Ipswich was out, no doubt, to see him. What they thought of his Ugliness, I cannot tell.

Who wonders that after fifty years of such life as this, Denison welcomed the hour that opened the Everlasting Doors? Peace to the ashes of the good men and women who stood firmly with him when it was a living death so to do! Peace to Denison’s dust as it slumbers in the quietness of the grave-yard on the hill! Fresh laurels we lay to-night upon the old red slab that covers him, and may those who live after us keep his memory green.

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